The One Ring™: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild 2011 Edition

This is the PDF version of the 2011 slipcase set of The One Ring. The new, revised, single volume 2014 edition can be found here.

"THE WILD WAS STILL THE WILD, AND THERE WERE MANY OTHER THINGS IN IT IN THOSE DAYS BESIDES GOBLINS"

Smaug has been defeated, the Battle of Five Armies has been won, and Bilbo has returned to the Shire. The War of the Ring is several generations away. In the relative peace, the Free Peoples of Wilderland look beyond their borders for the first time, establishing trade routes, renewing bonds between their cultures, and bringing prosperity to the region of northern Mirkwood, the Lonely Mountain, and the eastern slopes of the Misty Mountains.

But much danger still remains, and from the Orc-holds of the mountains to the dark and corrupt depths of Mirkwood a darkness waits, recovering its strength, laying its plans, and slowly extending its shadow . . .

The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild is the newest fantasy roleplaying game set in the world of The HobbitTM and The Lord of the RingsTM. It provides you with everything you need to begin your adventures in Middle-earth, including:

192 page Adventurer's Guide

144 page Loremaster's Guide

Two 22"x17" maps

Adventures over the Edge of the Wild is the core set for The One Ring roleplaying game. Set five years after the events narrated in The Hobbit, it introduces players to the world of Middle-earth focusing on Wilderland, the region visited by Bilbo in his journey to the Lonely Mountain. Future core and supplemental publications will advance the timeline and explore other areas of Middle-earth.

I have read, run, played, and/or written over fifty different role-playing games; to be fair, it's roughly forty-five unique systems, some games including GURPs, Palladium's system, Living Steel and Aliens Adventure Game, D6, etc. This game book is amazingly beautiful, the artwork evoking images of Tolkien's fantasy world are fantastic, and it's got two beautiful inside covers, the maps of which I wish were readily available online.

Alas, the book is absolutely riddled with typo's, and the organization of it is absolutely horrible. I can easily see me NEVER teaching this to a group of role-players. There are so many rules and ideals spread all over the place, that compiling them would leave every player in a group mystified as to whatever they can do. Torg: Role-Playing the Possibility Wars, Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 1st AND 2nd Edition, and the BattleTech Role-Playing Game are easier to teach and run than this game, by far. For my tastes, there are simply too many nebulous concepts for the...See more game to run smoothly for multiple sessions, at least. This game would be for advanced players.

I was reviewing chapters on my forum as I was reading along, but I stopped with combat... it's ridiculous in execution, and there are concepts Francesco Nepitello, in the way he's written it, doesn't seem like he's completely certain about. I'll continue to read, but the next edition of this game needs to be better organized, and the concepts cleared up. For example, recovering Endurance shouldn't have two tables set 32 pages apart. Also, when I was reading initially, I was taken with the understanding that to-hit, you roll the Feat die, your Combat success die/dice, and then add your Body to the score, but once I got to combat, I found out a character's attributes have nothing to do, at all, with your scoring, unless you spend a Hope point, which is something of a reversal of how in-game currency generally works. Likewise, I thought you were supposed to roll a to-hit, and then the character being hit has their Feat die and Armor die added together against that roll, which again was cleared up in combat.

So, there's a lot yet to be done with this game, and I would not consider it to be in a good place for release.

Again, it's a beautiful book, but it needs help.

June 27, 2015 8:04 pm UTC

I have to take a minute to eat my shoe leather...

It took some work, but I was able to get into this game, this book, drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and I have now figured out all I needed to know to run this game, effectively, and I now want to run this game.

The things I said about the book being disorganized and full of typo's is correct, but there is no denying the faithfulness of Francesco Nepitello's work to Tolkien's work. Quite simply, this would be an excellent addition to the works of The Tolkien Society.

I apologize to Cubicle 7 if I've caused any problems with sales for this game. However, you do need to take it back to the editing crew and have it gone through, yet again, for typo's and organization.

Antonio EJuly 10, 2014 12:12 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Any chance we can get this pdf updated with the new stuff in the revision? I don't want to carry and browse an additional document.

John RDecember 15, 2013 2:05 pm UTC

A $30 ebook? Seriously? The hardcover is $40.21 on Amazon.

Philip CMay 01, 2014 8:56 am UTC

Lowest price is £130 ($220) on Amazon.co.uk. Seems like a deal to me.

Marko WSeptember 15, 2013 8:19 am UTC

Hallo,

I’ve read there are changes to the original books (they are called Guides now, no longer Books). Is there any new content or has the errata been incorporated?

Thanks a lot!

Douglas BMay 18, 2014 2:52 pm UTC

PURCHASER

I've compared the old and new PDFs, and there are no changes other than the consistent replacement of "Book" with "Guide".

This product consist of two books and maps in a slip case (or a slew of PDFs if you purchase it that way). The books are The Adventurer's Book and The Loremaster's Book, and the maps come in Adventurer's and Loremaster's versions as well. We'll [...]

Yes it's pretty, though I have to say the artwork is not as inspiring as most of the reviews would have you believe. It's atmospheric and has some good system elements, such as the accumulation of Shadow points, the narrative-oriented Fellowship Phase [...]

I came to this game relatively late, but I'm blown away by its quality. I haven't had this much fun reading game rules since '81, when I stayed up all night reading the magic items section of the Dungeon Master's Guide. The most impressive feat [...]

I've been playing role-playing games since 1978, so when I say The One Ring is the finest game, from a physical quality perspective, that I have ever owned, I think that's saying something. I've been poring over the documentation in preparation for a [...]

These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.

Original electronic format

These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.